Smoke billows from the High Park Fire west of Fort Collins, Colo., on Monday, June 18, 2012. The wildfire has now burned about 90 square miles and destroyed more than 180 homes.

Peter O’Neil, the new executive director of Colorado Outward Bound School, says that he and course directors keep a close eye on the wildfires throughout Colorado. The High Park fire hasn’t directly affected any Outward Bound patrols in the Colorado backcountry, although a group climbing in Wyoming’s Vedauwoo saw the smoke from that fire when winds whipped it across the state border.

“We are aware it was going to be a bad wildfire season when we gathered all the staff together at our Leadville location,” O’Neil said. “If there is a part of the state where we know there’s a wildfire, we’ll move a course if it’s scheduled to run there. Last year, one of our patrols smelled smoke and saw ash, so the staff used a satellite phone to call in to Leadville and report it. It happened that fire was nowhere near the course, but the instructors were able to get reassured that they were safe. We have contingency plans.”

O’Neil said instructors who spot smoke or lightning strikes also are trained to call 911 as well as the Leadville Outward Bound base quarters.

“It’s a pretty good resource, having all those people out there with satellite phones,” he observed.

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Travel and OutWest editor Kyle Wagner grew up in Pittsburgh and lived in Lake County, Ill., and Naples, Fla., before moving to Denver in 1993, where she reviewed restaurants for Westword before moving to The Denver Post in 2002. She considers the best days to be those that involve her teenage daughters and doing something outside, preferably mountain biking or whitewater rafting.

Dean Krakel is a photo editor (primarily sports) at The Denver Post. A native of Wyoming, he has authored three books, "Season of the Elk," "Downriver" and "Krakel's West." An avid kayaker, rafter, mountain biker, trail runner, telemark skier and backpacker, Dean's outdoor adventures have taken him around the world.

Douglas Brown was raised about 30 miles west of Philadelphia in West Chester, Pennsylvania, where he spent a lot of time running around in the woods and fields (where he hunted and explored), and in the ocean (where he surfed and stared at the horizon). Now he lives in Boulder and spends as much time hiking, running, skiing and boarding the High Country (and the Boulder foothills) as possible.

Ricardo Baca is the entertainment editor and pop music critic at The Denver Post, as well as the founder and executive editor of Reverb and the co-founder of The UMS. Happy days often involve at least one of these: whitewater rafting, snowshoeing, vintage Vespas, writing, camping, live music, road trips, snowboarding or four-wheeling.